I guess they've found a whole whack of oil in N Dakota, largest in the country - now what to do with it. Keep it out of the hands of the oil companies for sure and you have to wonder if it wouldn't be a wise decision by the State to sit back and evaluate it for it's worth. If they keep it as State owned, they can use their own State bank to fund the development and then build their own refineries - sell the product to the other States and that could easily dissolve the imports from Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. N Dakota would be the richest State in the country....sammieswife.
OIL in N Dakota!!! Time to Keep it out of the private sector.
by sammielee24 38 Replies latest jw friends
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restrangled
Wow Sammie, where did you read this? I've got relatives out there-- JW's that own a good amount of land. Lets hope its not on their's or the old Borg might wind up with a few xtra $$$$$
r.
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SixofNine
W/o knowing any more than what's in your post, I'd have to guess that it is already in the private sector.
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Junction-Guy
How much oil are we talking about? Enough to bring gas prices down? I wonder why they are just now discovering it?
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sammielee24
It just hit the news major style and it's been on the CNN ticker for the last hour. I had heard about the shale oil in Montana and ND before but it couldn't be accessed easily for lack of technology but now apparently that is no longer an issue. The amount of oil exceeds that in Texas and is the largest in the entire country. A few years back I had heard the various Montana officials saying that selling oil from their shale could be done at less than half the cost being charged by the big companies and still turn a profit. I know - it is rather coincidental isn't it that this is brought up right now with oil hitting such high prices and the issues with the Middle East.
Interesting enough, people have been screaming at the amount of public land that's been privatized over the past 6 years but it's gone unnoticed as the government has taken more and more of the public land and sold it out to corporations for use. If land is kept public for public use, then resources have a right to benefit the public. Let's face it - emminent domain has been used to force people from their homes and cost them their livlihoods for years n ow - perhaps for the greater good of the American public and the state of North Dakota, the government there could apply the same principle to any natural resource on a company owned land. The greater good is to get out of oil dependence and a way to start might be to make it a State owned venture. sammieswife.
A new black gold rush is under way, this time in North Dakota. The potential payoff is huge -- up to 100 billion barrels of oil. That’s twice the size of Alaska’s reserves and potentially enough to meet all U.S. oil needs for two decades.
Until now, the obstacles to production seemed overwhelming. The crude oil is locked away in rocks that are buried miles underground in the Bakken Play, a field that stretches into Montana and Saskatchewan, Canada.
But times have changed. High oil prices and new technology make it worth the effort. Computer analysis and remote sensing systems, plus smart drills that can probe horizontally or snake left and right, vastly improve the odds of locating new pools and putting them into production. And though oil is unlikely to remain priced at current stratospheric levels, prices won’t drop to much lower levels, which happened several times since the 1970s, and cause new exploration to dry up. Even if prices fell by half, many barrels of oil could still be produced -- profitably -- from the region.
An official government survey of the Bakken region's oil treasure trove is due out next month. The report is expected to play it very conservatively, because it will confine estimates to the amount of oil that likely can be produced profitably based on last year’s oil prices. It will also not take into account any further technological advances that might make it even easier to extract more oil.
"The Bakken is much like the enormous natural gas field that sat for many years under and around Dallas until people figured out the geology and how to drill it out economically," says Lucian Pugliaresi, president of the Energy Policy Research Foundation.
There's at least a smell of the "Old West" as petroleum companies rush to stake their claims in the Bakken Play. Marathon Oil recently acquired about 200,000 acres in the area and will drill about 300 oil wells within five years. Brigham Exploration and Crescent Point Energy Trust are also interested in some of the action. EOG Resources alone figures it can produce 80 million barrels of oil from its Bakken field.
Figure on at least five years before the oil starts flowing in large volumes. A lot of work will need to be done first. In addition to installing drilling gear, firms must build supporting infrastructure, including roads, pipelines as well as new water, sewage and sanitation systems to meet the needs of workers and other area residents.
Note that the Bakken Play region is not an environmentally sensitive area similar to Alaskan tundra that has stymied much oil field development because of concerns about damage to the fragile environment. Still, some environmental protests are sure to emerge and may gum up development for a while, but they’re unlikely to stop oil production from the Bakken fields.
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Junction-Guy
This is the best news in a long time. I hope this will help the energy crunch. Actually the problem is not the supply of Oil anyway, it's just the greedy oil companies. There is no excuse for $3+ gasoline, and we shouldn't have to ride around in Prius'. I demand cheap oil--dang it !!!
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BrentR
Considering that there has not been a refinery built in the US in over thirty years new discoveries are not going to do a bit of good.
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sammielee24
Maybe the government could rescind their 12 billion dollar gift to the oil companies and instead gift it directly back to a State owned oil venture...that's a start! sammieswife.
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restrangled
How about diverting some funds from Iraq for America's benefit.....even if it is private land...for heavens sake lets take care of our selves for once!
I hope some of the candidates get this brought up to them and they act fast.
r.
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Junction-Guy
Which begs the question, why haven't there been any new refineries built, unless of course they purposefully want to keep the gas prices inflated. If it is a matter of supply and demand, then they need to upgrade their facilities in order to meet demand.